That's Amore--but this is A Murder

Tattoo artist Brett Kavanaugh inks high-class clientele in her Las Vegas shop, The Painted Lady. And when she's not on the job, she sets her designs on catching killers. . . .
Las Vegas is a rocking place where impersonators of the legendary Rat Pack - Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. - are alive and well and performing nightly at clubs all over town. Except they're not all. Alive, that is.

( ...to be continued...see below)
**Driven To Ink

Well, ain't this a kick in the head? Karen Olson is back--she's such a pal of Jungle Red--and we are thrilled that her newest book is out. (How many is this now? Seven?) Now Karen's gone all Vegas, baby, and probably has a cigarette in a long holder and long white gloves and a sllinky red dress and shakes a mean...martini. (And knows the rules of blackjack, which are obviously incomprehensible.)

But her inspiration is from the golden age of Vegas. Like Dino himself sings, er, sang: memories are made of this. Volare, everyone. Now, take it away Karen.

THAT'S AMORE...but this is--a Murder

KAREN: I’ve always had this thing for the Rat Pack.

Ever since seeing Ocean’s 11 for the first time, the original one, not the one with George Clooney (although admittedly, the George Clooney version is very easy on the eyes), but the one with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. The Rat Pack, which also included Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, Shirley McLaine, and Angie Dickinson, really were Vegas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The group, brought together by Sinatra, were all around town, drinking and performing and having a blast.

They became legend.

So when I was trying to come up with a plot for my third tattoo shop mystery, DRIVEN TO INK, set in Vegas, I knew I had to pay homage to this bit of Sin City’s history.

So what did I do? I killed off a Dean Martin impersonator.

And not just any Dean Martin impersonator. A Dean Martin impersonator whose job was to serenade couples getting married at the That’s Amore Drive-Through Wedding Chapel.
Okay, sure, Dino wasn’t the most famous Rat Packer. Frank was. But Frank seemed so clichéd, so done. And I’d already used Frank in my Annie Seymour series, in which private eye Vinny DeLucia bears a striking resemblance to the old crooner (not the fat Frank from his later years, but when he was younger, with Ava).

That was in part for my husband, who is a huge huge HUGE Frank fan. So much so that if we hear a Frank song on the radio, we have to stop for a moment of silence to honor his memory. I’m totally not kidding. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard my husband say wistfully, “He can sing like that because he’s loved and lost.”

So Dino it was for this new book. And not just one impersonator. No. I had to do it right. There is a whole stable of Dinos at That’s Amore. And someone seems to be targeting them.


My editor was concerned that my readers might not know what the Rat Pack was. I found that a little hard to believe. I mean, who hasn’t heard of Frank Sinatra? Or Dean Martin? Maybe they haven’t heard of Peter Lawford, he’s a little more obscure. But regardless, I had to put a sentence explaining the Rat Pack to my readers, just in case they live under a rock.

Or get them confused with the Brat Pack. Remember them? From the ‘80s? Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Robert Downey Jr., Judd Nelson. That dreadful movie St. Elmo’s Fire. The Rat Pack they weren’t.
But I digress.

If you were going to write a book set in Vegas and had to pick one of the Rat Pack to put in it, which one would you choose?

HANK: Angie Dickinson! That's who I'd be. I mean, choose. How about you?

******************************************

Karen E. Olson’s newest tattoo shop mystery, DRIVEN TO INK, is now available. Visit her website at http://www.kareneolson.com/

...continued from above..

When Brett lends her car to Sylvia Coleman and Bernie Applebaum for a drive-through wedding, she's not expecting to get it back with a dead body in the trunk - much less one who looks like Dean Martin and sports a clip cord from a tattoo machine around his neck.
As for the newlyweds, they vanish before they can start their honeymoon, so Brett and Jeff, Sylvia's son, go undercover as bride and groom to sniff out the rat who seems to be targeting the impersonators. Whatever's going on, it's not amore. . . .

****************************************************************************************************************

And we're quiet for a moment, today on September 11....

****************************************************************************************************************

What Happens on Jungle Red, Stays on Jungle Red

It's good news Friday!




HANK: We love it when good things happen to wonderful people. Dear dear FO JRW Karen Olson's just got some terrific news...
NAL has just picked up two more books in Karen's tattoo shop mysteries. The third will be DRIVEN TO INK, with a possible pub date of late 2010 or early 2011. The fourth is tentatively titled INK FLAMINGOS.



And now, journalist Karen has forsaken the chic Connecticut life..and sets her new mysteries in VEGAS. Have you been there? I haven't...but Karen has!

KAREN: Vegas. Everyone knows it. Even if you haven’t visited, you’ve seen it on TV, in movies. It’s got an allure that was born of mobsters and celebrities and scandals and gambling. Bugsy and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and showgirls and casinos like the Sands and the Frontier and the Four Queens and the Sahara.
When my editor and I were discussing the setting for my new tattoo shop mysteries, she originally suggested Miami or southern California. Those are the places where those TV tattoo shows are located. But as I reminded her, those are also settings for great crime novels, too, and those novels are written by writers who actually live there. I was concerned I’d be exposed as a fraud, since I haven’t strayed too far from my native Connecticut. My editor said they were just looking for palm trees and heat.
So I suggested Vegas.


No, I don’t live there, either. And I’d only visited Vegas once, for a total of two days, 12 years earlier. But Vegas seemed easier to fake somehow. Since so much of Vegas really is fake. Like the canal and gondolas at the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes, where the tattoo shop in my books is located. And the Eiffel Tower at the Paris resort. And the Brooklyn Bridge at New York New York. And the Roman statues at Caesar’s.


Halfway through writing the book, I realized I needed to actually visit Sin City. So my husband and I took our daughter out of school (yes, bad parents that we are) and flew to the desert in June, where it was a scorching 105 degrees every day. But it’s a dry heat. Ha.

There’s something about the desert that I’ve always loved. It was too hot to hike, but we took a drive up to Red Rock Canyon, just outside the city. It’s spectacular; the red rocks rising high into the clear blue sky, the brown desert floor speckled with the green of Joshua trees and banana yuccas.

Yes, I’m a New Englander, but I feel so comfortable in the desert.
We also spent a lot of time at the Venetian, where I took myriad photos so I could remind myself of the ambiance. We ate at Bouchon, Thomas Keller’s French bistro. We wandered through the MGM, where we stayed, and I took in the gamblers at the slots and the table games. We saw the Bellagio fountains.

When I started writing my books, I loved setting them in New Haven, the city I was born in. When my editor wanted me to move out of my hometown, I was a little nervous. Could I do it?

It was a lot easier than I thought. And I got to go to Vegas.

If you were to pick a completely different setting for your next book, where would it be?


Karen E. Olson
SHOT GIRL, NAL/Obsidian, now available
THE MISSING INK, NAL/Obsidian, July
www.kareneolson.com
http://firstoffenders.typepad.com